


watch it burn and rust

by ParadiseIsntPerfect



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, F/M, Losing a friend, losing a friend to protect them, single rape mention re Shianni, thoughts about death and facing the Archdemon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 12:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19377130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadiseIsntPerfect/pseuds/ParadiseIsntPerfect
Summary: Kalliana Tabris would never force a friend to do something they abhor. And she would never put Alistair on the throne when it's the last thing he wants. But he doesn't understand that a loathsome enemy could save all their necks in exchange.The fallout of the Landsmeet, where Kalliana Tabris loses her best friend in exchange for protecting his freedom by recruiting Loghain Mac Tir to the Wardens.





	watch it burn and rust

She watches his back as he walks away. The eyes of the Landsmeet still press in on her. On them, but he is no longer part of that them. He has made that clear. She wants to say that she does this _for him_ , that she does this to protect him. To protect them both. To save him from the throne he never wanted. That the Joining can be damnation as well as salvation and that his experience of it is not the only truth. That if the traitor survives the Joining she’ll still need him. That if the traitor dies with the drinking of it, she’ll need him even more. None of that seems like it might matter to him and she has never been one to beg, to cajole, to break. It is not in her to do so. And certainly not beneath the weighty gazes of so very many shems.

 

So she lets him walk away. The hard, angry line of his receding shoulders like the stroke of the executioner’s blade for everything of theirs, of _them_. Knowing that he means never to see her again, despite everything that had hung between them. All those memories and feelings and loyalty, falling to the hard ground to shatter like nothing more than pretty pieces of glass.

 

He thought he loved her, once, she remembers. He didn’t know her though, not then, but she knows that despite her rejection he had come to love her in truth. As a friend and a sister in arms. Something she cherished more from him than she ever could have the rose he had offered below the gates of Redcliffe. He had been too sweet and soft and naïve, and she had tried to teach him better even as she had envied him so much it burned her.

 

Steeling herself, she turns back to the traitor and Riordan. “Very well. The Landsmeet is over. We have Warden business to attend to.” She turns her gaze then to the Queen and wonders if her eyes seem like stone, turquoise or lapis or jade. _He_ had told her they did, once, when she was angry and hurting, that even when the rest of her was a mask her eyes gave away the hardness of her rage. “By your leave, Majesty.” It wasn’t the obedient question it should have been. But then she was never one to treat those high and mighty shems the way she was supposed to, the way they thought she should. It never protected her or hers, so why bother?

 

Without even an answer she turns when the Queen’s lips begin to part, grabbing the traitor’s arm and marching him from the throne room. He doesn’t seem interested in protesting or struggling. Good. She’s not sure she wouldn’t undo what she’d just done by finishing him off if he did. And even that wouldn’t bring back Alistair. She hopes he will do something with his freedom that makes him happy. She doesn’t need him to know that she doesn’t care if he hates her for it, that freedom is worth any price. She had learned that at her mother’s knee long ago.

 

“I will see to it that Loghain is in decent shape for the Joining, and prepare what is needed.” Riordan’s voice breaks through her thoughts and she blinks at him in surprise, the first sign she has any weakness.

 

“Fine.” She drops the traitor’s arm as though it were a hot coal held in her bare hand and not the densely muscled bicep she had been gripping with gloved fingers as hard as iron. “Thank you.” Riordan is the only one who seems to understand why she did what she had and there is a kindness in his gaze that she cannot bear. She turns and walks away, leaving the castle on her own. She’ll be there, later, when the traitor becomes once again more than what his ambitions could make of him. When he becomes a Warden, regardless of if he lives or dies.

 

Zevran will find her, she knows. But she also knows that he will give her the space she needs before he does. She can hear him on the rooftops behind her as she walks through Denerim’s streets. He doesn’t have to be heard, he can be silent when he wants to be, but he’s letting her know he’s there, at her back, without being intrusive.

 

At her back.

 

The way Alistair was supposed to be, had promised he would be. All because she was willing to use Mac Tir’s body as one more shield against the Archdemon, even after all his crimes. Even after trying to poison Arl Eamon. Not that she gave a fig about the Arl. Not that Alistair got out of his own feelings enough to realize that Mac Tir had given her people, her family, over to Tevinter mages for whatever they pleased. That she had as much reason to want vengeance against the traitor as he did. But no, he had taken her choice to mean she was _rewarding_ Mac Tir for what he had done. As though she were afraid to kill those who deserved it. But death by Joining or Archdemon was just as much death, even if not done by her hands or Alistair’s, and it could save their necks.

 

Even after everything, Alistair was still so naïve as to think that being a Warden, becoming a Warden, was an _honor_. It was laughable. The Joining had been used to force convicts and soldiers and innocents alike into fighting the darkspawn, whether they wanted that _honor_ or not. It had been the only way to save her from the guards who’d wanted her head for putting down the son of a bitch who had raped Shianni like the mongrel cur he was. A Warden was absolved of all crimes and it had been her shield from shem justice. Where was the justice for Shianni or the other elves of Denerim that Vaughn had tortured and abused? Nowhere, if not by her hand. And it hadn’t pained her one bit to dole it out.

 

But for all his good-heartedness, Alistair had never known what the real bottom of life looked like. He was still a shem, even if he was one of the good ones. He hadn’t known that sometimes the best justice was using others as they had tried to use you. And she envied him so much it burned. But she could not hate him, couldn’t ever hate him, and that he had walked away from her, from their mission, was not enough to make her start. Not in any world.

 

A hard sigh leaves her as her steps slow. She turns and looks up, spotting Zevran among the chimneys of a nearby building. They didn’t move for a moment, but without a word he descends to meet her in the street.

 

His gaze seems to scrutinize her, but it isn’t unpleasant. Zevran has never made her feel the way countless shems do when they stare. His scrutiny is born from care, from love, not dehumanizing fascination or scorn. Seemingly satisfied by what her lover finds in her eyes, he tilts her face forward, drawing her close and plants a kiss between her brows. Her lids slip closed and she finds her hands sliding up his back, holding onto him like an anchor in a storm. She knows he knows what Alistair’s departure, the manner of it, has done to her. He has lost his own compatriots, brothers and sisters in arms, in similar ways before. Betrayal, if only it was impossible to understand why such things happened, why such choices were made. She finds it is enough knowing that Zevran understands her so perfectly, even if no one else does or can anymore.

 

The rest of their strange gaggle of friends understand her plenty, understand her well enough, but none the way Zevran always has. She had thought Alistair knew her so well, but if he had he wouldn’t have left. He would have known that her choice was made only to protect him, to serve their goal of ending the Blight.

 

Or perhaps not.

 

“Come, _mi amor_ , we are almost at the end.”

 

“Yes,” she replies simply, taking Zevran’s hand and walking with him back to Arl Eamon’s estate. There is still work left to be done before she can finally rest.


End file.
